A Son's Tribute - Last Gasp

We chose this hymn for my Dad's service.

On my Birth Certificate he described his occupation as evangelist.

It fell to me of course to describe his occupation on his Death Certificate.  Evangelist, I said to the Registrar.

She looked at his age in his mid-eighties.  "That's retired?", she suggested.

I hesitated.  He had been in hospital only once in his life really, those last weeks.  He had told the doctor that he was not afraid to die because he was a Christian and trusting in the Lord, one of the nurses who passed his Bible over to him to read each day had been given it to read for themselves.  Perhaps he was an evangelist still.

 

Then again, I thought, this is a Death Certificate.  He may have been evangelising until his final breath but there was a final breath.  There are no evangelists in the presence of Jesus.  Only retired ones.  Evangelist (retired) then.

Digory

Only as a result of my summer holiday in Cornwall did I learn the interesting story of Digory Isbell, a stonemason who, with his wife Elizabeth, opened their little cottage as a preaching station for John Wesley, the great evangelist.

Their gravestone at Altarnun church bears this inscription, which somehow manages to encompass the meaning of Christian marriage, sacrifice, spiritual warfare, obedience, promises and glory.  A kind of introductory course on Christianity written by two lives and a memorial,

Reader, may thine End be like theirs.

From early Life, under the Guidance and Influence of divine Grace, 

They strengthened each others Hands in God, 

uniting to bear their Redeemer's Cross 

and promote the interests of his Kingdom 

in the face of an opposing World, 

thus estimating Scriptural Christianity; 

in Youth, Health and Strength 

their conduct was regulated by its precepts;

in Age, Infirmity and Death 

They were supported by its Consolations 

And in a happy Immortality 

They enjoy their rewards.

Wesley

Today is the anniversary of the conversion of John Wesley, perhaps the only conversion marked by a memorial on a London plaza (in Aldersgate Street, above). There I joined Methodists as they lay a memorial wreath and sang from this Wesley hymn that seem to me to be an apt end to a Sabbatical;

I want an even strong desire,
I want a calmly fervent zeal,
To save poor souls out of the fire,
To snatch them from the verge of hell,
And turn them to a pardoning God,
And quench the brands in Jesus’ blood.

I would the precious time redeem,
And longer live for this alone,
To spend and to be spent for them
Who have not yet my Savior known;
Fully on these my mission prove,
And only breathe, to breathe Thy love.

My talents, gifts, and graces, Lord,
Into Thy blessed hands receive;
And let me live to preach Thy Word,
And let me to Thy glory live;
My every sacred moment spend
In publishing the sinner’s Friend.

Enlarge, inflame, and fill my heart
With boundless charity divine,
So shall I all strength exert,
And love them with a zeal like Thine,
And lead them to Thy open side,
The sheep for whom the Shepherd died

Welkin

Just a slight adjustment.

Charles Wesley wrote a hymn about Christmas beginning

Hark how all the welkin rings,

Glory to the King of Kings

On the face of it the editor who gave us, instead, Hark! The herald angels sing! (complete with exclamation mark) made it a whole lot more understandable, fun and even Christmassy. Didn't he?

Not necessarily so.

In the Christmas story the heralding angels said rather than sang. That seems trivial until we think how much more carefully we pay attention to said words than sung words. Maybe if the angels had sung 'Glory to God in the Highest' the shepherds, like the audiences at a thousand Christmas shows, would have politely or even ecstatically applauded. And then carried on sheep-watching. But Christmas wasn't a performance, it was a proclamation!

And losing the welkin isn't such good news either. In the ancient mind it was the roof, the imagined dome, of the sky where the stars were the decoration. Like any good roof it could ring if the volume was great enough. A new-born king wouldn't be enough to impact the welkin, but the King of kings, God in the Highest?

Oh, yes. He's well worth a shuddering welkin of praise. He always was and always will be, whether in a manger, on a cross or more properly on a throne.

I don't expect I will ever sing about the welkin. I suppose I will always Hark to imaginary singing angels. But, please God, may Christmas never be for me a performance, but a message that heaven is shouting.

Have a very Happy Christmas!

(You can join in a rendering of the original by clicking here, but in my view the tune is enough to make the welkin weep!)